Three Celebrated Giselles, With Partners to Match, Define a Title Role

Osipova, Vishneva and Cojocaru: 3 Giselles at Ballet Theater

Three of the world’s foremost interpreters brought their Giselles to American Ballet Theater at the Metropolitan Opera House: from left, Diana Vishneva, Natalia Osipova and Alina Cojocaru.Credit
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

American Ballet Theater accomplished a feat on Thursday and Saturday at the Metropolitan Opera House that rendered it exceptional among the world’s ballet companies: it presented the three most internationally admired interpreters of the title role of “Giselle,” each with a male partner who was an Albrecht of her caliber.

This is, however, less remarkable in New York than anywhere else. All three women have already danced the role with the company in recent seasons. But the nationalities and current affiliations of these six dancers say much about the global nature of modern ballet. Those of us who came to ballet during the cold war must also regard it as a tribute to the relative ease between West and East today.

Alina Cojocaru, a Romanian who trained in Kiev and London, is a principal with the Royal Ballet; her partner on Thursday, Angel Corella, is Spanish and is now artistic director of Barcelona Ballet. Natalia Osipova, a Russian, left the Bolshoi in Moscow last year to join the Mikhailovsky company in St. Petersburg; she reunited on Saturday afternoon with David Hallberg, the American paragon who joined the Bolshoi shortly before she left it. Diana Vishneva, the Russian prima ballerina of the St. Petersburg Mariinsky company, danced the Saturday evening performance with the Brazilian Marcelo Gomes.

The three women delivered performances in some respects unlike the ones they had last given here. Each wore a different dress from the others in Act I. Each had separate ways with the famous steps. And each extended our idea of “Giselle” in her own direction.

In sheer dance-off terms, the Osipova-Hallberg performance generated the greatest excitement and produced the most phenomenal execution. The lucidity with which Mr. Hallberg crisscrosses his feet in the entrechat-six jumps of Act II (he does a series of 24 of these) is unparalleled. Whether extending his leg in arabesque or outstretched in the air when jumping, he exemplifies classical line better than any man in ballet today, and perhaps better than any woman.

Ms. Osipova’s jumps, with an elevation beyond that of all other women, transform the role; they blaze. When hopping on point in a diagonal line in Act I, she effortlessly does a little circle that sums up Giselle’s sweet exhilaration. She’s the least conventional of the three ballerinas, wearing a sleeveless dress in Act I and performing the famous mad scene not with all her hair loose but with one large lock astray. In that chief Act I solo she makes a bright announcement of the opening arabesques on point, staying there rather than changing the line of the arabesque into a descending penchée and coming off point.

Mr. Hallberg and Ms. Osipova, nonetheless, gave the least complete performances of their roles. When Mr. Hallberg runs on for his first entrance in Act I, he trails his cloak in the air behind him as if solely for the pretty effect it makes, then lets it drop. Despite the charming freshness of his acting, he could convince nobody that Albrecht is the peasant he at that point claims to be. In Act II his romantic nobility is picturesque, without tragic weight. Ms. Osipova is not a natural adagio dancer; she takes very slow tempos for her two adagio dances with him in Act II without knowing how to fill every moment of a drawn-out phrase. These two are extraordinary dancers, but they are also works in progress.

Ms. Vishneva is the most conventional of the women, but her conventions are those of the Mariinsky, the company with the longest and most illustrious traditions in this ballet. Merely the way she carries her head — inclining forward, emphasizing the vulnerability of the neck — is a touching sign of Russian “Giselle” heritage. She is also the one who shows a few notable mannerisms (extending her arms, again in Mariinsky style, with a slight drop of the wrists) and the one who seems to luxuriate in her applause, breathing it in as if it were opium.

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But she is also the most lusciously beautiful. The ravishingly fluent lines of her neck and limbs, the perfect theatrical legibility of her eyes and mouth, and the gorgeous plasticity of her torso are all marvelous. This performance was the most beguiling I have seen her give in this role, and the most multifaceted.

She and Mr. Gomes make a superb “Giselle” combination. In Act I she is a peasant in whom slight touches of gaucheness coexist with the extraordinary beauty and natural refinement that would lure a passing nobleman. In Act II the glow of her dancing amazes. Only with her do we begin to feel here the final turn of the “Giselle” screw, that Giselle the ghost still so loves dancing that instead of trying to save the energies of her beloved Albrecht she sometimes abandons herself to the air and cannot help luring him to final immolation.

Although Mr. Gomes deserves high praise for his turns and jumps, and even more praise for his partnering and judicious musicality, you love him most for just who he is. He convinces as both the aristocrat Albrecht (good with the cloak) and as the peasant he pretends to be; class matters less to him than to other people. When he does that series of entrechat-six jumps, he shows with the gradual ascent of his arms the strange exaltation of spirit Albrecht attains as he nears the love-death end for which he hopes.

Ms. Cojocaru, the most fragile and innocent of Giselles, is the one whose acting makes the ballet most emotionally piercing. At the climax of Act I’s festival of the vine, she merely turns her head to look at Albrecht, and yet it’s a great moment. She seems to catch her breath at the very sight of him. Though it has been only seconds since she last saw him, she conveys with her full eyes that being crowned the village’s vine queen is immaterial beside the love that now fills her life.

Ms. Cojocaru is wearing different point shoes this year, with smaller blocks. She did a simplified version of the hops on point (disappointing some), but she was wonderful in the ways her arabesques melted off point as she changed their line into penchée. In Act II, as she quivers an extended foot rapidly in her ronds de jambe, you could feel the same innocent playfulness that characterized much of her Act I performance.

Although the Cojocaru-Corella partnership has not been seen in recent years — New York had never seen them together in “Giselle” — the two seem made for each other. They’re both youthful, impulsive, ardent — dancers who carry an eternal springtime within them.

Neither won any “Giselle” competition in terms of technical display; yet everything seemed about the beating of their brimful hearts. In his biggest Act II solo, Mr. Corella chooses to perform the two more overtly passionate diagonals of brisés — traveling jumps in which the legs aim forward while rapidly crisscrossing — instead of the more sensational entrechat-six. The story was extraordinarily suspenseful; these two artists played it as if in a single, unbroken thought.

American Ballet Theater’s season continues through July 7 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 362-6000, abt.org.

A version of this review appears in print on May 21, 2012, on Page C5 of the New York edition with the headline: Three Celebrated Giselles, With Partners to Match, Define a Title Role. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe